Does your business have negative Google reviews that you can’t stop thinking about?
You wouldn’t be the only business owner to ever consider deleting your Google Business Profile with the aim to start fresh.
Depending on the content of the review, negative reviews can have an impact on the way customers view your business.
Negative Google reviews can also affect how your business performs in local search rankings.
But unfortunately, deleting your Google Business account will not delete the reviews.
Deleting your Google Business Profile will only result in you losing control of your account.
The reviews, negative and positive, will still be visible to customers on Google – including all the details about your business.
So, what should you do? Luckily, there is a far better solution to dealing with negative reviews – and it can also help you to get more positive reviews.
Can Google Reviews Be Removed?
Deleting your Google Business account will not remove reviews. Deleting it is essentially abandoning it, with all its information still publicly available.
Despite that, there is a way to remove Google reviews but it is not in your power.
The only way a genuine negative Google review can be removed is for the author of the review to delete it themselves.
Can you ask a customer to remove a negative review on Google?
It’s a valid question. And there is nothing stopping you from apologizing and politely asking a customer to remove or change their review.
The customer might sympathize with you but, in most cases, they will not probably feel any incentive to delete their review.
That does not mean you should offer them an incentive, however. Doing this can work against you, as it might come across as bribery.
It also goes without saying that a customer should not feel threatened in any way to delete their review.
Ultimately, there are much better solutions for dealing with negative Google reviews.
Reporting An Inappropriate Google Review
There is another way that Google reviews can be removed, but it only applies to reviews that violate Google’s content policies.
Google content violations include, but are not limited to, reviews that are vulgar, untruthful, hateful to business owners and employees, or spammed to manipulate ratings.
In these cases, you may flag the review as inappropriate.
If the review is removed will depend on whether Google determines that the review has violated their content guidelines.
It’s also worth mentioning that trying to report reviews that do not contain violations will not work in getting them removed.
How Bad Are Negative Reviews?
No business wants to receive a negative review. But just how bad are negative reviews?
Negative reviews are not the end of your business. And while negative reviews are never favorable, there are advantages to negative reviews in addition to the constructive criticism they can provide.
Negative reviews can add a layer of authenticity to your business’s review sites.
You would be hard-pressed to find a business without a few negative online reviews and most customers are aware of that.
In fact, a business that only has perfect 5-star reviews on its review sites can raise suspicion.
Negative reviews can also show a positive side to your business by how you have responded to negative reviews and how your business has improved on areas that previously received criticism.
This can be evidenced in your customers’ recent, positive reviews.
In either case, the goal for any business is to get more positive online reviews.
How Do You Deal With Negative Reviews?
Since it is not possible to delete customer reviews by deleting your Google Business Profile, how should you deal with negative reviews?
There are two key ways to deal with negative reviews, both of which are far more effective than going out of your way to try to get reviews deleted.
These are responding to negative reviews and getting more positive reviews. And, together, these have the potential to positively turn your Google business page around.
Respond To Negative Reviews
Positive or negative, you should always aim to respond to customers’ reviews.
It might seem like a lot to manage but, the fact is, replying to reviews can work wonders for your online reputation and how customers perceive your business.
Put simply, responding to reviews shows that your business is in touch with its customers.
It showcases appreciation, communication, genuineness, the constant desire to improve, and, most importantly, that your business cares.
And the more reviews that you have, the more that your business can demonstrate this level of positive interaction with its customers for other customers to see.
Get More Reviews
Even more effective than responding to negative reviews is getting more positive reviews.
Positive reviews, overall, are a testament to your business’s value and legitimacy, which have the power to convert more customers and, at the same time, attract more customers by improving your local search rankings on Google.
Getting more positive reviews can essentially “hide” your negative reviews by outnumbering and making them less authoritative.
Similarly, a steady stream of positive reviews will eventually push negative reviews into the background so that they become less visible and less relevant.
The Best Solution? Get More Google Reviews
Unfortunately, deleting your Google Business Profile will not delete the reviews.
It would simply result in you permanently losing control of your business page with all of its details, and reviews, still available for public viewing on Google’s search engine results pages.
The best solution is to improve your Google business page by getting more positive reviews.
Of course, getting more Google reviews is easier said than done.
And even with a strategy in place – together with the best customer service that your business can provide – getting reviews is still a long process that involves a lot of manual hard work.
That’s why ReputationStacker was developed.
ReputationStacker speeds up the process of collecting customer reviews.
It’s a fully automated service that benefits businesses by streamlining the way customers review their experiences.
If you want to get more Google reviews, ReputationStacker is the solution.
With it, you can completely turn your Google business page – and your other review sites – around, so that they become authoritative platforms for driving business and boosting sales.
